What is the story on Bodansky? As the Director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the U. S. Congress, it seems like he would have some credibility. He set forth some pretty articulate explanations of where Saddam's WMDs may be (Syria) and that al Quada did receive support and training from Iraq. Is he just pushing a book or does he know what he's talking about? And if any of what he is saying is true, why hasn't anyone else picked it up? I know that the "mainstream" media would totally ignore it, of course, but I haven't seen anything about his theories on any of the more independent news sites.

As well, he is not the only one saying that WMD were moved into Iraq. Some high level captures have said the same thing. Colin Powell showed the UN satellite photos before the war of convoys leaving Iraq for Syria...speculation at that time was the trucks carried the WMD.

4
posted on 08/24/2004 11:48:14 AM PDT
by Peach
(The Clinton's pardoned more terrorists than they ever captured or killed.)

The information that he was putting forth has been simmering for quite some time now from a number of sources. It will be interesting to hear what Duelfler (sp?) will have to say in the upcoming report.

In his previous works he was making the case for Al Queda and Iraq working together BEFORE 9/11. Read "The High Cost of Peace" to find a damming inditment of the Clinton Middle East "Peace" process. He also wrote the definitive Bin Laden biography (again before 9/11). He is a foremost expert and a must read for background.

THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE IRAQ WAR is the name of the book. Highly recommended. Bodansky isn't an apologist for Bush's policy in Iraq. In fact, there is no editorializing in his book. It's 515 pages of reports from various sources he has throughout the Middle East, Europe, and the US.

Here's an excerpt I lifted from Bodansky's book, which I emailed to another Freeper for their information:

I've transcribed an interesting and telling excerpt from Yossef Bodansky's recent book that shows the ties between one of the best smoking guns and Israeli intelligence. Sadly, the White House has apparently chosen to keep under wraps anything the Israelis find --

From THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE IRAQ WAR by Yossef Bodansky (Regan Books, 2004), chapter 3, pp. 51-53:

On January 14, 2003, British police and security forces raided a terrorist safe house in Manchester, ending a several-month-long investigation. A Scotland Yard detective was killed in this raid, which recovered a quantity of ricin  an extremely potent poison. The investigation, begun in the fall 2002 in Israel, involved at its peak the intelligence services of more than six countries. The investigators findings provided the smoking gun supporting the administrations insistence on Iraqs centrality to global terrorism, the availability of operational weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and proof of the close cooperation between Iraqi military intelligence and al-Qaeda.

The data accumulated during this investigation could have provided the casus belli  the justification for war  and urgent imperative to take on Saddam Hussein. Yet in the first of several indecisive and self-contradicting political maneuvers, the Bush administration preferred to accommodate Blairs pressure to keep Israel at arms length, not implicate Arafat, and placate Blairs fellow West European leaders rather than go public with the findings of the investigation. Despite mounting international criticism and skepticism in the media, the American public was not presented with one of the strongest and most explicit justifications for the war with Iraq.

On the night of September 13, 2003, Israeli Special Forces intercepted and captured a three-man squad attempting to cross the Jordan River and enter the Palestinian territories on their way to Arafats compound in Ramallah. The interrogation revealed that they were highly trained members of the Baghdad-based Arab Liberation Front (ALF), sent to conduct spectacular strikes under the banner of Arafats Fatah. Specifically, they were dispatched by ALF Chief Muhammad Zaida Abbas, better known as Abu-al-Abbas, to operate directly under the control of Tawfiq Tirawi, chief of the Palestinian Authoritys General Intelligence Service and Arafats closest confidant. Abbas and Tirawi were extremely close childhood friends, having grown up together in a village justnorth of Ramallah and ultimately joining Arafats fledgling terrorist organization together in the early 1960s.

The three ALF terrorists were trained for several missions, including an operation that involved using shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down civilian airliners as they approached Ben-Gurion Airport and using anti-tank rockets and missiles to ambush convoys  including American groupings on their way to Iraq. They were also there to organize and train Palestinian terrorists  all trusted operatives of Tirawis  to assist with operations and intelligence collection inside Israel. The three had been briefed in Baghdad that they would get the missiles, heavy weapons, and explosives they might need from Fatah via Tirawi.

The Israeli interrogators were most interested in what the three had to say about their training: During the summer, they had been trained along with other squads of ALF terrorists at Salman Pak  a major base near Baghdad  by members of Unit 999 of Iraqi military intelligence. They recounted that in an adjacent part of the camp, other teams of Unit 999 were preparing a select group of Islamist terrorists specifically identified as members of al-Qaeda. Although the training was separate, and individuals used code names exclusively, they were able to learn a great deal about the missions of their Islamist colleagues.

The three ALF terrorists told the Israelis that in addition to the myriad special operations techniques taught at Salman Pak, the Islamists also received elaborate training in chemical weapons and poisons, specifically ricin. Moreover, on their way to their operational deployment zones, the Islamists were taken to a derelict complex of houses near Halabja, in Kurdistan, where they conducted experiments with chemical weapons and poisons. The area where the training took place was nominally under the control of Ansar-al-Islam, Osama bin Ladens Kurdish offshoot. From there, the ALF terrorists recounted, Islamist detachments traveled to Turkey, where they were to strike American bases with chemical weapons once the war [with Iraq] started, and to Pakinsy Gore in northern Georgia (on the border with Chechnya) in order to assist Chechen terrorists as they launched major terrorists operations against Russia. Others were dispatched to train Islamist teams arriving from Western Europe via Turkey in sophisticated terrorism techniques, including the use of chemical weapons and ricin.

Within a week of the capture of the ALF trio, a delegation of senior Israeli military intelligence officers traveled to Washington to brief the White House about their findings. By then, there had already been independent corroborations of the Israeli reports: Turkish security forces, acting on tips provided by Israel, arrested two al-Qaeda operatives studying plans to attack the U.S. air base in Incerlick with chemical weapons, and American intelligence also learned from its own sources about the activities of foreign mujahedein in Georgias Pakinsky Gore. Then, on October 23, a group of Chechen and Arab terrorists captured a Moscow theater in the middle of a performance, taking over seven hundred people hostage, rigging the theater with bombs, and threatening to kill everyone in the building. When negotiations failed and the terrorists shot at least one hostage to demonstrate their determination, Russian antiterrorist forces broke into the theater after using a special knockout gas to neutralize the Chechens before they were able to detonate their bombs. The Russian operation was considered a great success, as all the terrorists were killed before they could blow themselves up; however, close to two hundred hostages died from secondary effects caused by the gas, including heart attacks and choking on their own vomit. In any case, the mere occurrence of a spectacular strike in Moscow meant that there could no longer be any doubt about the accuracy of the material provided by the three Palestinians in Israels custody.

Still, the White House was reluctant to advertise this evidence because it demonstrated Israeli intelligences major contribution to the war on terrorism [Emphasis mine} [W]hen ricin was discovered in Manchester and all the dots connected, the intelligence Israel had extracted from the terrorists in its custody was proved wholly accurate. Israel had in fact demonstrated to the Europeans why Saddam Hussein has to be toppled, and soon

I hope the Administration figures out a way to release this information by the election. The Administration has been hit with "Bush lied!" regarding WMDs for the past year and a half, and have pretty much just taken it. There's a new report from the Iraq Survey Team due in September. That would be a great time to release all that we know about the fate of Saddam's WMDs.

I try very hard not to be astounded by the utter lack of information conveyed by the talking heads at the major news outlets, especially when it comes to anything that would make Bush or America look reasonable or sane. But this just blows me away. Here is credible evidence that al Quada was actually being trained to use WMDs by Iraq, and it goes virtually unreported. Unbelievable. Even if Bodansky is full of crap, it seems like some journalist would at least try to make a name for himself by discrediting him and his theories. Yet, not even a blip on the 'mainstream elite media' radar. Amazing. Oh wait, the Congressional 9/11 Committee made its report and we have nothing to worry about: "Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?"

Here's an email exchange I had in early July with Greg Copley, President of the Internation Association for Strategic Studies, for which Bodansky is Research Director:

Yossef Bodansky is considered one of the foremost experts on Middle East terrorism in the world. He's been head of a Congressional policy office on terrorism, consults with a number of intelligence think tank organizations, and has written numerous books. He wrote what is considered to be the definitive biography on Osama bin Laden in 1999, and predicted therein what we are now seeing in regard to international terrorism.

Bodansky's books are filled with information you'll never read in the mainstream media; the information tend to give his books a spy-thriller flavor. There is, however, one problem with his books: he never footnotes or references anything he asserts.

In reviews on Amazon.com regarding his book on the Iraq war, there are a couple of lengthy discussions of the book by a Greg Copley. It turns out that Mr. Copley is President of the International Strategic Studies Assoc., and a friend of Bodansky's. I emailed Mr. Copley last week, simply asking him about Bodansky's irritating habit of not citing his sources. Below is my email, and the response I received today:

Mr. Copley,

I noted the battle of reviews on Amazon.com pertaining to Yossef Bodansky's latest book, The Secret History of the Iraq War. I didn't consider it so much a battle of reviews, as it was your effort to describe the information in the book, and another "reviewer's" effort to snipe at both you and the book. I should let you know that based upon your comments on Amazon.com, I purchased a copy of Mr. Bodansky's book this afternoon.

I read Mr. Bodansky's previous book, The High Cost of Peace, which was quite an eye-opener. It was an eye-opener both in terms of revealing the strategic coordination between Saddam, Iran, and Syria up to and after the 1991 Gulf War, and also an eye-opener in the fact that this strategic partnership has never (to my knowledge) been discussed or reported in the mainstream news media (an eye-opener, but not a surprising one).

I do have two questions about Mr. Bodansky's books which I hope you have time to quickly comment on:

1) Why do Mr. Bodansky's books not contain footnotes for the information contained in them? His information is startling, but as one Amazon reviewer of The High Cost of Peace commented, without footnotes, his book reads as a fascinating, but unverifiable, story -- almost like a Clancyesque thriller. In a world where most people are willing to bury their heads in the sand and deny the truth, blockbuster books like Mr. Bodansky's don't pack the power they should, because of the lack of verifiable sources.

2) With information about the connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda, and about Saddam's WMD program trickling-out, why do you think the Bush Administration hasn't made a high-profile disclosure of what they know about both topics? From information I've read, which is readily available over the Internet, I'm convinced of Saddam's connection with international terrorist groups, and I'm also convinced he was heavily engaged in WMD development (or, as David Kay reported last year, Saddam at least had the infrastructure, the technical and scientific expertise, the growth media and precursor chemicals, and the will, to produce WMDs). So, why hasn't the Administration made a strong and sustained disclosure about what is known about both, but rather has allowed its opponents to continue to hammer away at the "lack" of evidence?

Many thanks to your attention to my email. And thanks again for the "tip" on Mr. Bodansky's latest effort.

GREG A****

And here's Mr. Copley's response:

Dear Greg:

Well, thanks for your detailed message which awaited my return from London last night. Sorry, because of that trip, I did not respond earlier.

Seffy Bodansky's latest book does, at least, contain a section on sources and methods, in which he attempts to explain his lack of footnoting. I have also taken this up with him, because, as other reviewers have commented, the lack of footnotes implies, or suggests, a lack of confirmable evidence.

What we have seen in both his latest books, but particularly the Iraq book, is a greater reference in the text itself to sources where they have been in print, or based on personal discussions. That, at least, was a step toward addressing the criticism. However, much of what Bodansky provides is based on direct, first-hand interviews with people within either intelligence communities or within Islamist movements. Clearly, the first task is to protect those sources.

I have, where I have had questions or doubts about some of his material, gone into lengthy and often heated discussions, but have invariably been able to be reassured as to the sources (which, by virtue of the fact that we have worked together for some 20 years and the fact that we share the same security concerns). He has often privately disclosed the details of the sourcing to me, and I have been able to verify or understand the material origins.

Significantly, however, it is the passage of time which best verifies Bodansky's material. His 1999 book, Bin Laden, the Man Who Declared War on America, was absolutely verified by subsequent events. His earlier (1994-5) books on terrorism in the US brought out in detail the plans to use hijacked airliners to attack the World Trade Center and other targets. And so on.

Finally, Seffy has no agenda other than to get out the story. Certainly money is not a motivator, and he has no private life worth talking of, apart from having his dog drag him away from his computer and books when he is (rarely) at home from one of his trips to interesting places. It is because he literally is what he says that a lot of Islamists and Arab leaders talk to him privately. They believe that at least he understands them.

On the WMD, we worked over the past decade on tracking the inflow of ballistic missile research and chemical, bio and nuclear weapons research moved into Libya, along with some 20,000 Iraqi scientists, engineers and workers. There were also Egyptians involved. We went further in this than Seffy did, largely because it seemed, I suppose, periperhal to the publishers who wanted to focus on Iraq per se. So, too, did the Administration; Rice and Powell wanted no focus whatsoever outside the borders of Iraq. This was, in fact, naive in that Saddam knew that the UN "search warrant" was for Iraq itself; as a result, he moved, as he had done in the past, his sensitive materiel to Syria, Sudan and Libya. The big Libya move of stuff and people was in the 1996-98 timeframe. Qadhafi's admission of "Libya's WMD programs" deliberately did not acknowledge the Iraq link, because of Qadhafi's fear of a US assault.

Anyway, suffice it to say that I am satisfied with Seffy's excellent and professional commitment to verifying his material. I know that he has every item of data logged, with its reference sources available, even though most of these cannot be divulged publicly for fear of burning those sources. And the consequences for his sources would, in most instances, be death. We have, in our operations, lost some sources in the past, and don't want any repeats of that.

try very hard not to be astounded by the utter lack of information conveyed by the talking heads at the major news outlets

It is astounding. But I somewhat blame the White House for this. Why hasn't the Administration been more public about what is known about Saddam's WMD program? The issue with the Niger yellowcake, and Joe Wilson's lies, is a good case in point. The White House was very weak in its defense of Bush's "16 words" in his State of the Union address dealing with Saddam's efforts to buy uranium from Niger. In fact, the only thing the White House said at the time of Wilson's article about his "tee-sipping" visit to Niger to check out the reports was that the statement shouldn't have been cleared for inclusion in the SOTU. The press, of course, went ape-poop over the story (Chris Matthews spit all over "Hardball" guests for weeks), the President was branded a "liar," and even now that the British have confirmed that indeed Saddam WAS trying to buy yellowcake from Niger, Bush hasn't completely recovered from the political damage.

The White House takes political hits on this whole WMD issue that they don't deserve to take, but they haven't done a good job of defending themselves. Personally, I believe that if Bush loses this election, it will be because of their refusal to be more forthcoming about what is known about Saddam's WMDs.

Steven F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard also has a book-- not as thorough or wide-ranging, but more readable--called The Connection which details al-Q and Iraqi (especially IIS) contacts prior to 9/11. The connection is indisputable.

One of the reasons, IMHO, that the Bushies have failed to articulate this connection is that whenever they do, CYA analysts leak stories that there was no connection, the intelligence is bogus, etc, etc. For example: Czech intelligence reported that Atta met with IIS in Prague. The Czechs have never doubted that this meeting took place, and have never retracted the story. Yet, every time the thing pops up, out comes some anonymous source at CYA who says, "Czech intelligence has said this never happened." In response to the most recent leak/lie, the Czech President himself said, "they keep saying we've repudiated this meeting. It isn't true. We believe it happened."

There is a war going on between Bush and the State Department/CYA. Unfortunately, this is one war Bush is either not willing to fight, or not aware that he's fighting. It's time to dismantle the CYA once and for all, and turn foreign intelligence back over to the military. Military people have a culture, tradition, and genuine understanding of why they must be subordinate to a civilian authority in a free country. The CYA doesn't understand that they're supposed to answer to the Commander-in-Chief.

Finally, people keep focusing on connections between al-Q and Iraq, as if bin Laden is the only enemy we have. Bush stated the dimensions of this fight: it is a war against terrorism with global reach, and countries which harbor those kinds of terrorists are our ENEMIES. Iraq not only sponsored bin Laden, but many other terrorist organizations as well. But most importantly, the Iraqi Intelligence Service was a terrorist organization in its own right. Its global reach was undoubted. It had already planned and promised (and may have executed) terror strikes against the United States. So, there is no need to connect Saddam to al-Q. He had his own personal terrorist organization already.

That's just inconceivable to me. What possible strategy or justification could there be for ceding the entire basis of the war to the Dems? Its political hari-kari. It seems like the Bushes could make some defense of their positions rather than just throwing up their hands and quitting, even if it might damage some hum-intel resources. The truth is, if the Repubs lose the White House, those hum-intels are gonna get f*#ked by Kerry anyway.

"Personally, I believe that if Bush loses this election, it will be because of their refusal to be more forthcoming about what is known about Saddam's WMDs."

Exactly. But doesn't this observation beg another, perhaps more important question? I mean, the Bush administration is full of some very smart and cagey people, not to mention the king of shrewdness himself -- Dubya. So WHY IS IT that they haven't done a better job? They certainly have the info and the wherewithall. I can only conclude that the stakes must be so terribly high that that they simply cannot jeapordize their intel yet -- or something of that nature. Seriously -- things just don't add up.

Bush stated the dimensions of this fight: it is a war against terrorism with global reach, and countries which harbor those kinds of terrorists are our ENEMIES. Iraq not only sponsored bin Laden, but many other terrorist organizations as well.

Excellent point. And Bush's policy is based on the belief (a justified belief) that by taking out or checking the state sponsors of terrorism, terrorist organizations like AQ will fall apart.

90% of the news media depends on daily press releases from the Democrat National Committee to write their stories. Bodansky obviously has spent his life cultivating too many contacts to count -- and many of them are in nations that are unfriendly to the U.S. Bodansky does his homework. Ths US news media largely parrots back what they're told by their partisan allies.

I agree. It's a mystery. But, then, the campaign still has 2-1/4 months to go. Again, the ISG is set to release their latest findings in September. If the Administration doesn't give this a high profile, I'll be further mystified. Congress got a preview of this report last month, and have you noticed how the Dems have remained pretty silent on the "Bush lied!" tactic? Even John Kerry has backtracked and said that knowing what we know now, he still would have voted for the Iraq war resolution. I think they realize that if they pound the "Bush lied!" line regarding WMDs, it will eventually bite them back before the election.

"you noticed how the Dems have remained pretty silent on the "Bush lied!" tactic?"

It's like it vanished overnight. There is definitely something going on under the currents. And I've seen Dubya play rope a dope on the dims too many times to not think that there are some real zingers coming.

When the Administration releases what it knows about Saddam's WMDs (I say "when," and not "if"), the Dems will wish we were all back debating the Swift Boat Vets' case against Kerry.

Here's my theory: The US knows Saddams' WMDs went to Syria, and the US is putting pressure on Assad Jr., the same way the US and Britain pressured Quaddafi. I would not be surprised to see an announcement (the last weekend of October, if we're lucky) from Little Assad admitting that Syria received Saddam's WMDs before and during the Iraq war, and "in the interest of regional peace" is turning them over to the US or some international entity like the UN.

its simple saddam sent his chem/bio weapons to Syria. special forces tracked convoy of big trucks leaving Iraq headed to syria. main reason for war was saddam was going to his nukes from libia in a undergrond mountain complex and the iraqi scientists in cash by the north koreans. this would have much faster than waiting for sacntions to expire.

currents reports are as follow syrian president asad is right pondering to break contact with iran and yield to our demands. iraqi bio/chem are in stored in two locations one of them is the bekkaa valley the others is in a army base not quite far from the border with iraq. couple of weeks ago heard that un was looking into syrian wmd programs. who controls lebanon syria and receives its from iran. attack is certain.

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